Carol in Wonderland
by Malteaser
Summary: It's not that she never noticed anything off about her daughter's boyfriend. But David was so utterly devoted to Alice that she was willing to overlook a few quirks. Being from another planet is not a quirk. It might even be a deal breaker.
1. Down the Rabbit Hole

Carol was pretty familiar with Thanksgiving Day disasters.

There had, of course, been the time she had introduced Robert to the extended Lewis family; despite repeated notices, Mom had acted surprised to find that he was vegetarian, which had set the tone for all his interactions with her family for the entire rest of the visit. The next year they had only tofurkey, which wasn't even to Robert's tastes, and they had ended up eating Chinese instead. There had been the year she was pregnant with Alice, and had thrown up _on_ the turkey: they had eaten Chinese that year too. Robert left almost a full nine months before that year's Thanksgiving, but Dad had been far enough gone that he kept pulling her aside and asking if her husband had gone out for Chinese, and it had been a long time, do you think we should start looking for him? Next year there had been one less seat at the table.

This year was already shaping up to be another bad one (Mom had decided at the last possible minute that she was absolutely unable to fly, and at last check in, all the Lewis clan were stuck in a couple of minivans somewhere in Georgia) when David and Alice came back from the parade and were ambushed by half a dozen armed gunmen right outside her door.

At first, Carol had just thought they were having another one of their infamous arguments. It wasn't too long before she realized that there were too many voices for it to just be Alice and her boyfriend: she assumed that meant that part of her family must have arrived. Fearing that Aunt Margaret might possibly be trying to trip David in admitting he was related to Ringo Starr, Carol opened the door and very nearly walked into the barrel of a gun.

She gasped, involuntarily. The man holding a gun in her smirked, and turned to where Alice and David were standing in the hall, back to back and hands raised. "Yeah, there's no one in the apartment," he said, in a British accent.

"No one who has anything to with this," David said swiftly, shifting slightly. "Why don't you just let her go back inside? You don't want any extra witnesses, do you?"

The man cocked his gun, and Alice reached out and dragged Carol out from in front of it, placing her between her daughter and David. "On second thought, why don't we just follow your first suggestion and go back to the shop?"

"All of us," David added. "Under our own power even."

The man nodded, and the nine of them began to walk down the stairs. Alice clutched at her arm, and refused to let go.

~*~

The shop of course, referred to the warehouse Alice had knocked herself out in: David had converted it into a bookshop with an apartment overhead within months of their meeting. Fate, he had said, as he'd christened it The Rabbit Hole. She supposed 'fate' referred to the fact that it was within walking distance of her apartment, so that if Alice wanted to spend the night (or two or three or the entire week) she could easily pop home and grab a toothbrush and a spare set of clothes.

The walk itself was mostly through back alleys, so the opportunity to raise the alarm didn't present itself before Carol and Alice were lead inside.

Normally it was cozy in a haphazard, cluttered short of way, with bookshelves, potted plants, and seating strewn about without any regard for what could conventionally be described as aisles. The cash register was located near its center, surrounded by small tables and mismatched chairs, and doubled as a center for ordering hot drinks. Paintings by local artists hung suspended from the ceiling by wires, added to the overall effect of walking into your grandmother's sitting room.

As she was propelled forwards through the shop today, she felt more like she was entering a disaster area. It was in complete disarray, shelves demolished and chairs upturned. Several paintings had come crashing down in a pile of canvas and wood, and books were strewn across the floor. She was grateful for Alice's grip when she nearly took a tumble over a piece of broken pottery.

"What is with you people and destroying my shop?" David asked angrily, surveying the damage with one hand clutched to his hat.

"This has happened before?" Carol asked.

David shrugged. "The first time they were just doing their jobs, but this is just malicious. There's no point to this at all!"

"As I said," the man who had held a gun to Carol's head began. He was the tallest of the group, with completely white hair that reflected the fluorescent light's shine back up to the ceiling. Now that she had calmed down enough to pay attention to finer details such as their kidnappers' appearances, she could also see a pin shaped like the number ten on his lapel. "We're looking for the list."

"And as I've said, we haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about," David replied. "Do you want us to run through this again? Alice, have you been sent a list?"

"No Hatter, I have not. Have you?" Alice answered, sounding far less frightened than Carol had expected, given the way she was still squeezing on her arm.

"Nope, me neither," David turned back to Number Ten. "I'm not sure what else you want from us."

"What about her?" asked another man to Carol's left, nodding at her. Like the leader, he sounded British; unlike him, he was a brunet, and wore a number six.

"She's not involved," Alice told him, stepping between Carol and Six.

"You keep saying that." Ten said, moving closer.

"Because she's not," David insisted, intercepting Ten.

"She doesn't even know about the looking glass," Alice added, trying to push Carol back a bit farther.

"Looking glass?" Carol repeated faintly.

"See, she's got no idea," David confirmed.

"No, I don't. What is it I'm supposed to know?" Carol asked.

"Now's not a good time, Mom," Alice hissed.

"Mom?" Ten repeated, sounding amused. "You've lived with this for two years and still haven't told your own-"

"Enough," David interrupted before Alice could do more than glare back at him. "If you want our cooperation, you're going to have to stop taking cheap shots."

"I thought you didn't have the list?"

"I don't," he replied. "Which doesn't mean that I _won't_ have it. I'm expecting a courier in about two ticks, there's a good chance this list of yours is in his possession, yeah?"

Ten nodded, reluctantly. "Well, then," David continued. "Always assuming you haven't completely trashed my rooms as well, we could go upstairs; I'll put a kettle on, you'll stop waving guns around in people's faces, and we'll wait for it to arrive."

David smiled. Ten contemplated him for a moment, and then gestured towards the far end of the warehouse, where the stairs up to his apartment were. "After you, Hatter."

Carol could never tell whether it was the fact that the stairs were their original industrial size, the way the halls were lined with bookcases and filing cabinets, or if the hallway really was, in fact, just that narrow, but it was always hard for her to walk down it without feeling at least a little claustrophobic. Today it was difficult not to have a full blown panic attack.

"Do you know who these people are?" Carol whispered to Alice, more out of a desire to distract herself from the feeling of the walls closing in on her than anything else.

"Not now, Mom," Alice repeated.

"Yes now, Alice!"

Her daughter didn't reply. Carol pressed onwards anyway.

"What did he get you caught up in?"

"Mom!" Alice yelped, clearly offended.

"Well, what am I supposed to think?" Carol retorted. "You certainly weren't in any danger of being kidnapped by… by the British mafia _before_ you met him!"

"They're not the mafia," Alice said.

Before Carol could repeat her question, Ten spoke up from further down the hall: "And believe me, no one here mistakes your daughter for the lesser threat."

Carol's response to that was cut off by Alice shoving her in between two bookcases as David opened the top half of his office door into Ten's face. There was, presumably, an awful lot grunting and yelling as the fighting began, but she couldn't hear it over the sound of blood pounding in her ears. The room tilted dangerously, and for a moment all she knew was that she needed to get out of here before she was crushed to death. She pushed herself forwards, crashing into someone as she did so. He landed on top of her, and she screamed until she realized that Alice had kicked him off her.

"Mom, come on, get up, let's get you somewhere with more space in it," Alice was saying. Carol let her pull her up on her feet and lead her past Ten's body into the office, where David was busy opening the shades on his windows. She sank down on his couch, watching him move against the skyline in the reflection of the mirror propped up against the far wall.

"Oi!" he yelled suddenly, spinning around to face the hallway. "I said don't move! Don't move!"

"Go ahead," Alice said sitting down at the other end of the couch. "I'll catch up."

"Right," David nodded, picking up the gun from next to Ten's hand and jogging down the hall.

"Just breathe, Mom. Everything's fine. See?"

She pointed out the window. Carol nodded, half listening to her, half-listening to the sound of the scuffle in the hallway.

"Breathe, okay? I'll be right back." Alice hurried out of the room down the hall. Carol turned her attention from the mirror to the body just inside the doorway. After enough time had passed, she came to three conclusions: a) Ten was unconscious, not dead b) she felt good enough to stand and c) she wanted answers, and she wanted them _now_.

She walked to the door and watched as David tossed Alice a handcuff from out of a filing cabinet drawer. Alice cuffed the man at the farthest end of the hall, and David reached inside the jacket of Number Six, pulling out his and Alice's cell phones.

"I would like to know," Carol began. Both David and Alice snapped upright, startled. "What the hell just happened?"


	2. The Pool of Tears

Alice and David exchanged guilty looks.

"Well?" Carol demanded.

"Mom," Alice began.

Carol cut her off. "So help me, Alice Rebecca Hamilton, if the next words out of your mouth are 'not now' you will not enjoy the consequences! We've just been kidnapped and held at gunpoint, something which you are acting entirely too blasé about by the way, and I would like to know why!"

"First things first," David said, grabbing another pair of handcuffs from the drawer and pushing past her to get at Ten. "Let's finish securing these blokes and get them inside."

Carol looked over at Alice, who immediately busied herself with dragging one of the men into the office. Bereft of anything more constructive to do she helped a dazed man with a four on his lapel to his feet and marched him into the bathroom. It wasn't very long before the six of them were piled in, in varying states of consciousness and comfort. David closed the door and turned to Carol.

"Okay, so," David said, smiling charmingly. "What is it you need to know?"

"Who are those people? What is this list their after? How are you involved? How is Alice involved? How often is this sort of thing happening? _Why_ is this sort of thing happening? What the hell is going on?"

David blinked. "That's an awful lot of questions."

"We should start at the beginning," Alice said.

"Right, of course," David agreed.

Carol waited. Neither of them said anything.

"And where exactly would the beginning be?" Carol prompted.

"David isn't British," Alice said, suddenly.

"No, that's right, no I'm not," David said vehemently. "You've spent more time in England than I have, actually."

"I spent a couple hours in Heathrow when I was a college student," Carol reminded him.

"And I've… watched some BBC shows." David nodded.

"So, where are you from, then?" Carol asked, exasperated. "Australia?"

"No."

"New Zealand?"

"Nope."

"Well then, where?"

"You wouldn't believe him if he told you," Alice said seriously.

"But you did?" Carol demanded. Her daughter didn't trust easily. It would be just her luck to place that level of confidence in someone who didn't deserve it. "How long have you know about this, anyway?"

"I knew from the moment we met," Alice admitted. "I never actually thought he was British."

"To be fair, there was a whole lot of very compelling evidence about my not being British laying about when we first met," David said. "None of which I happen to have handy at the moment."

"But what are you?" Carol asked.

David opened his mouth, and the sound of ringing came from his pants pocket. "In very high demand, apparently," he replied, flipping his cell phone open.

"You've got to be kidding me," Carol said flatly.

"He's not," Alice answered for him, craning her neck to take a look at the screen. "The people texting him are the ones who would know about that list they were after."

"I don't suppose I could get a straight answer about that either?"

"We don't know about the list," David said wearily. Alice plucked the phone out of his hands, and jerked her head in Carol's direction. David sighed, and then pushed his hands into his pockets before continuing. "The place I'm from just came out of something of a bad period. Terrible dictator, lots of beheadings, the whole nine yards… anyway the upshot of it is that most of my people have forgotten how to do things. Like read or write, for example. That's why I'm here, I get books and instructional videos and the like and I ship it back home."

Carol tried to connect his answer with her question and failed utterly.

"Or at least, that was what the job description was when I took it," David continued. "Nowadays, things are a bit trickier. Criminals from my… land keep crossing over here. When that happens I normally end up hosting whoever's looking for them. Occasionally I help with the apprehending."

"It's more than occasionally," Alice replied, handing him back his phone. "And it's _we_. We help."

"Is this number of insults really necessary?" David asked, frowning at the phone.

"Yes," Alice replied, hitting the send button. "Yes it is."

"Okay." David shrugged, pocketing the phone again.

"So you're… Iraqi?" Carol guessed wildly.

"No, not even close," David replied after a beat.

"Are you even going to _pretend_ to answer any of my questions?" Carol cried.

David opened his mouth, and then closed it as both he and Alice focused their gazes on something behind her. "Maybe we should show you first."

Carol turned around, and watched as a man with what appeared to be a deformed Mickey Mouse hat on his head finished stepping out of the mirror.

The man blinked at her, before turning to Alice and David. "Is this a bad time?"

"Yes," David replied. "We needed you to have done that a good fifteen minutes ago!"

"We got ambushed just outside my apartment," Alice explained. Carol heard rather than saw her open the bathroom door; she was too busy watching two suited men walk out the mirror into David's office, her jaw slackened and body frozen in place.

"They were looking for some sort of list: I assume it's why you bought all the back up?" David continued, waving the suited men over to the bathroom. They did so, leaving room for the next pair to enter.

"Yes, but-" He looked between David and Carol, obviously confused.

"This is my mother, Carol," Alice said, moving to stand next to her. "Mom, this is Darrel, the Ten of Clubs."

"Hello!" The Ten of Clubs said politely, holding out his hand.

Carol took it automatically, and replied with "I have no idea what's going on."

"Well," David began, and then was cut off by his cell phone ringing again. He fished it out with a muttered "Bollocks."

"You can talk in front of her," Alice told Darrel.

"Well thank you!" Carol cried, moving out of the way as one of the suited men dragged an unconscious gunman into the office.

Alice ignored her. "What's on that list?"

"Names," Darrel replied. "People the Queen planted-"

"Wait!" David yelled suddenly. "Save it. We've all got to go. Now."

"What?" Alice and Darrel asked together. David held out his phone for them to see: the text read "_How cheerfully he seems to grin and neatly spread his claws and welcome little fishes with gently smiling jaws_".

"The White Rabbit's been compromised," David told them. "Hence, our pressing need to leave."

Activity in the room stopped, and the suited men looked to Darrel for guidance.

"As he said," Darrel replied wearily, waving them on. "Everyone grab a rebel or two and go."

Carol watched as they hefted the gunmen through the mirror, pushing those who could stand through before grabbing the unconscious ones and following. There was a click, and Carol turned around to watch as David slide the deadbolt on the office door shut.

"Wait, when you say leave, you can't mean through _that_," Carol protested.

"Er, yes, yes I can," David replied, pulling the curtains shut.

"I am _not_ going through that!" Carol told him. "I don't even know what it is, but I know I'm not going through it!"

"Yes, you are," David insisted, pushing the couch towards the door. "They know where you live, it's not safe here."

"But-"

"It's a Looking Glass," Alice told her, as she picked up one end of the couch and helped David move it in front of the door. Carol could _hear_ the capital letters in her words. "And it's safe, as long as you breathe."

"You want to know where I'm from?" David asked. "Well, this is how you get there."

"Through the Looking Glass?" Carol asked, disbelievingly. "Wait- _through the Looking Glass_?"

"Yes," Alice said firmly, grabbing her arm and pulling her towards it. "Just promise me you'll breathe, okay?"

Carol didn't have the chance, because in the next moment she and Alice had stepped through.


	3. The Caucus Race and a Long Tale

Traveling through the Looking Glass, Carol decided, either felt a lot like having a panic attack or gave her one. She and Alice collapsed on the other side, Alice grunting slightly as her knees hit the stone, Carol gasping for breath.

"You were supposed to _breathe_, Carol," said a voice from behind her. David helped Carol and Alice up, and then steered her towards a nearby window. A warm breeze ruffled at her hair, and she leaned heavily against the sill. "Now I know where Alice gets it from."

She could tell by the quiet "Ouch" that followed that statement that Alice had slugged her boyfriend in the arm again, but Carol was too busy looking out the window to admonish her to be nice. There was a city outside, but not New York, and not a city like she had ever seen before: it seemed to have been carved entirely out of white marble, for one thing, and all of the buildings she could see were in the shapes of chess pieces.

"Welcome to Wonderland, Carol," David said quietly.

"Wonderland?" Carol repeated.

"Yes. The City of the Knights, built on the border between the old Red Kingdom and the Kingdom of Hearts, more specifically."

"Of course it is," Carol agreed amiably. "I don't know how I could have missed that."

"The way you said that entirely without sarcasm frightens me," David remarked.

"She's in shock, I think," Alice said, guiding her away from the window and towards a bench. "This is a lot to take in at one go."

"Okay, well," David looked around. "Will you both be alright if I go find out where Darrel's gone to?"

"Yeah, go ahead," Alice said, sitting her down.

"You sure?"

"Go, Hatter," Alice ordered. "We'll be fine."

"So, Wonderland," Carol said, after he was gone.

"Yeah, it's… not a kid's story," Alice replied. "I found it about two years ago- that night I conked my head in the shop, remember?"

"Yeah, it's difficult to forget," Carol said, with a shudder at the memory. Then she frowned. "You were chasing after that boy- the one before David."

"Jack Chase," Alice reminded her. Carol nodded.

"Whose real name is Jack Heart, and is actually the King of Hearts," Alice continued. Carol stopped nodding. "Although, he was still a Prince when we met him."

"You were proposed to by a Prince," Carol said, incredulously. "And you turned him down?"

"Twice," Alice confirmed.

Carol groaned.

"I wasn't lying about him having a fiancé," Alice told her. "He did. He still does- the wedding's supposed to be in a few weeks, though it's been that way for the better part of a year, so…"

"So you fell through a Looking Glass, found out your current boyfriend was a Prince, and engaged and then somehow ended up with another boyfriend…" Carol's voice trailed off. "You were only gone for an hour, Alice."

"Actually, it was a bit closer to a week," Alice told her. "Time's not exactly fixed, between here and home."

"Of course it isn't," Carol said, throwing her hands up in the air. "Why should it be?"

Alice frowned. "Mom…"

"So the first time you came was an accident," Carol said. "Have you been back since?"

"Yes," Alice admitted. "We've been back three times: once for Jack's official coronation, once to bury Hatter's father properly, and once-"

"Just Alice!"

Alice spun around, the large smile on her face only partly relief at their conversation being interrupted, and greeted an elderly man Carol quickly recognized as David's slightly senile Great Uncle Charlie. He'd come to visit him for a week once, about three months ago, and had clarified a few points about Arthurian legend for anyone who would listen and generally embarrassed David every time they got on the subway. Today, because everything was different today, he was wearing armor, and far more happy to see Alice than someone who'd once seen her on a visit to their great-nephew should be, so perhaps he wasn't a former university professor after all.

Was anything she was told about David the truth?

"Charlie!" Alice said, hugging him close. "How are things in the City of the Knights?"

"Quite well," Charlie replied. "And quite dull, too. Your arrival has been the most excitement we've had since I was officially declared a knight of the realm."

"Well good!" Alice laughed. "At this point, no news is good news."

Carol coughed, and stood up. "Charlie."

"Please," he said. "Sir Charles Eustace Fotheringhay Le Malvois III, now that we may speak without deception."

He bowed. Carol curtsied. With a little help from Alice, he straightened with a smile.

"It is good to see you again as well, dear lady," he said, before turning back to Alice. "Your Harbinger has asked to me pass along the message that there is a scarab leaving for the Kingdom of Hearts shortly, and if it meets with your approval he can arrange seats."

"Scarab? Harbinger?" Carol asked.

"Harbinger is what Charlie calls Hatter," Alice explained. "A scarab is a sort of giant flying beetle machine."

"You're going to voluntarily get on something that flies," Carol said.

"It beats travelling by flamingo," Alice told her.

"… What?"

"Articulated birds of the empyrean!" Charlie cried. "We flew upon them during our escape from the Queen's Court, after rescuing Alice of course."

"Rescuing Alice from what?" Carol demanded.

"Nothing! I had everything under control!" Alice protested. "Which way to the scarab, Charlie?"

Charlie sniffed, jaw jutting forwards. "This way…"

Carol walked quickly, so that she was level with the knight. "So, how did you and Alice meet, then?"

"She and her Harbinger fell into one of my Jabberwock traps," Charlie said. "Chased there by the great beast itself! I was quite irate, at the time. I didn't know who Alice was, you see, and I had been hunting that creature for _decades_."

Carol opened her mouth, realized that Charlie would have no idea what the Jabberwock in the movie looked like for comparison, and moved on to her next question. "How long ago was that?"

"Very nearly three years now."

"_Three_ years?" Carol repeated.

"I told you, time isn't fixed," Alice said. "How long has it been since you were knighted?"

"Oh, just over half a year for me," Charlie said. "And you, Just Alice?"

"We're coming up on three months," Alice said.

Three months. Carol thought back. "Was that the afternoon you told me you were dropping Charlie off at the airport? The one where there was a bomb scare and I couldn't reach you on your cell phone?"

Alice blushed guiltily.

"And before that- you were here to bury Hatter's father?"

"We told you about that," Alice protested swiftly.

"How much of what you told me was the truth? Had he even just died? Did you visit him on his deathbed? Had he died a while ago and-"

"Yes," Alice snapped. "Yes, he was very dead, he died when Hatter was eight. It took them that long to find and identify the body."

"And you couldn't have told me that?" Carol asked. "I would have understood _that_, Alice, even if you couldn't have explained where exactly you were going."

"I didn't want to dredge up memories," Alice sighed. "For you, or for Hatter."

"Oh God," Carol stopped short as the obvious smacked her in the face. "You're dating the Mad Hatter!"

"I prefer to think of myself as the Charmingly Eccentric Hatter, actually," said Dav- said _Hatter_, holding open a door. "Are we flying?"

"We're flying," Alice said firmly, all but running ahead of them. "Let's go."

Hatter remained holding open the door until she and Charlie had passed through, then jogged ahead to catch up with Alice, who was waiting at a junction, clearly at a loss as to where to go next.

"Youth," Charlie said, somewhat derisively. "They always think they know better than their elders, do they not?"

"Well, I'm glad there's _something_ that's universal across worlds," Carol said, following his lead. "I feel like I have to ask: are you really related to D- Hatter?"

"By blood, no," Charlie admitted. "The bonds formed during combat are not to be trifled with, however."

Alice and Hatter were out of sight by then, but Charlie seemed to know where he was going. She forced herself not to be too worried. Yet. All bets were off at the first sign of flamingos.

"What do you know about him, then?" she asked. "I mean, really, solidly, know about him."

Charlie stopped, thinking. "I know that he has a solid right hook. He is very well-read on subjects which were, until recently, forbidden areas of study to citizens in his kingdom, and he holds no allegiance above that of his to Alice. He is also incapable of standing still for any length of time, a shameless liar, far too reliant upon underhanded tactics for my taste, and very, very rude."

Carol nearly laughed at the affronted tone Charlie had adapted for that last phrase. She could only imagine what Hatter's initial reaction to Charlie would have been, now that she knew he hadn't grown up knowing him.

"They do make quite a team, you know," Charlie continued as they began to walk again. "Just Alice and her Harbinger. They have saved Wonderland time and again where more conventional souls had been failing for decades."

"So, everything I know about my daughter's longest relationship is a lie," Carol translated for him.

"Well, yes," Charlie admitted. He opened a door and they were abruptly outside and facing… well, a giant flying beetle thing.

"This is a scarab, then?" Carol asked.

"Yes indeed, m'lady," Charlie confirmed, offer her his elbow as they reached the boarding ramp. Carol took it, slightly charmed in spite of herself, and they began to walk upwards just as Hatter poked his head out of the door.

"There you are!" he called out. "I thought I was going to have to send out a search party!"

"There is no need for your impertinence, you bread kneader you!" Charlie called back. "Simply because you prefer to leap into vehicles at full speed does not mean we all travel with such haste!"

Hatter smiled bemusedly and held open the door for them again. The scarab's corridors were very narrow, but she could see a window at the far end of it, so she wasn't doing too badly yet.

"Are you coming with us then, Charlie?" Hatter asked, closing the door behind them.

"My Queen has tasked me with delivering a message to the King of Hearts today," Charlie informed him. "So yes, I am."

"That's good timing," Hatter remarked.

"My Queen is gifted with the power of foresight, which doubtlessly informed her of-"

"I know, Charlie," Hatter interrupted, opened the door to a compartment. "That was a joke."

"Oh yes. Of course it was," Charlie said sweeping inside with a grandiose air.

Carol was relieved to find that there was a large window set into the wall. Alice, of course, sat by the aisle, looking mildly nervous, but nowhere near as horrified as she had the last time she had tried to fly anywhere.

"Saved you a window seat," she said, patting the cushions next to her. Carol sat; Charlie and Hatter settled themselves in the seats directly across from them.

"So… you're delivering a message to Alice's ex?" Carol asked.

"Mom!" Alice protested.

"Alice's _two-timing_ ex, don't forget that part," Hater interjected.

"I believe she was talking to me?" Charlie admonished imperiously. When there were no further words, he turned to her with another genial smile. "I am indeed. However, the subject of the message is one which I am sworn to reveal only in the presence of the King."

Carol could barely hear his words over the great, shuddering groan that the scarab emitted as it took off. Beside her, Alice paled, and Hatter leaned forwards and offered her a hand to squeeze between her own.

"It's alright!" he yelled above the din. "That's perfectly normal, as soon as we're out of the dock it'll get a lot-" The noise stopped, replaced with humming. "Quieter."

Alice took a few deep breaths, then let go of his hand; Hatter leaned back into his seat, as though nothing had happened.

"It doesn't sound like that in the piloting compartment," Alice stated.

"No, that's soundproofed," Hatter informed her.

"Good to know," Alice said, pointedly looking away from the window.

"So, we're going to the Kingdom of Hearts?" Carol asked.

"Myumsiki," Hatter said.

"Gesundheit," Carol replied.

"No, Myumsiki City," Hatter clarified. "It's the center of commerce for the kingdom, and the seat of government while they rebuild the palace."

"What happened to the palace?"

Hatter and Alice exchanged hapless looks, and did not answer.

Charlie didn't share in their compunctions. "It was destroyed in the battle to overthrow the Queen of Hearts," he explained. "Exploded with its own firepower! Alice completed the coup shortly thereafter."

Carol turned to Alice, who had a slightly horrified expression on her face.

"I grew up there, too," Hatter said swiftly.

"The palace?" Carol asked.

"Myumsiki."

"Oh," Carol said, wondering if she should ignore the change in topics, or ask about the coup later. She decided that there was enough she didn't know that she could let the pair of them talk themselves out before pressing the issue. "What was that like?"

Hatter opened his mouth, closed it again, and then said "Not as bad as it could have been, actually. I spent most of my childhood in the Great Library, reading, and when I had enough of that I ran wild through the streets until I settled myself down enough to apply myself to business."

"It might be worth mentioning that most of the streets in Myumsiki end in a mile-high drop," Alice supplied.

"They do not!" Hatter scoffed.

"Two miles."

Hatter rolled his eyes.

Carol stared at them. "Alice hates heights."

"I hate guns," Hatter countered.

"Besides," Alice added, smiling slightly. "Hatter wouldn't let me fall."

Carol couldn't be entirely sure (the brim of his bowler cap was in the way) but she thought Hatter's ears might have turned red at the compliment.

**A/N: Because I screwed up and posted a chapter from another story here last night, I'm going to send this out early. Sorry for anyone who got the alert and then ended up reading about pizza instead! **

**Additionally, myumsiki is Russian for mimsy, which is a word used to describe something that is miserable and flimsy: exactly the sort of work you would do while hungover or still high from the night before. I felt it was appropriate for that crazy, crumbling place, so, there you go.**


	4. The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill

By the time the city came into view, Carol had learned a few more things about how Alice had met Hatter: he'd been running a tea shop, she'd been running the risk of catching her death of cold, they'd both ended up running away from a man with a rabbit-head-shaped cookie jar instead of a face and into a Jabberwocky… and, oh yeah, at some point they also ended up overthrowing the Queen of Hearts using flamingos and an army of the dead Charlie happened to have handy.

The details were sparse, to say the least. Alice and Hatter were obviously editing out the parts they thought she wouldn't approve of, with Charlie interrupting with _some_ of the things they were leaving out. This lasted until Hatter managed to sidetrack the knight with a heated discussion about the folklore surrounding the Stone of Wonderland (Oh, and there was that too: Alice had been proposed to by a prince with a sacred power source for interplanetary travel. Twice.) and then the plot rapidly unraveled. It wasn't long before Carol began to watch the shadow they cast over Wonderland out the window, while Alice preferred to watch the two men go at it, an amused smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

Carol had never shared her daughter's trepidation about the dangers of flight; true, planes weren't the most spacious of places, but as long as she had the window seat, she was fine. But as they began to approach the city, descending to below the level of the rooftops and not slowing down in the slightest, she began to get nervous.

"Shouldn't we be stopping?" Carol asked.

"Not quite yet," Hatter replied. "The dock's near the city's center." He turned back to Charlie, frowned, and then turned back to her. "It's supposed to fly between the buildings. Don't worry."

"Right," Carol said quietly. Alice reached out and grabbed her hand.

"It's okay, Mom," she said. "Don't panic until after I do."

Carol laughed, only slightly strained, as the scarab squeezed into the space between two skyscrapers. She watched uneasily as the empty space between the scarab and the wall shrank to a few yards, before widening again to reveal a more open area containing a large statue of Alice.

"What?" Carol cried.

"Great Cheshire!" Charlie exclaimed.

"Oh no," Alice moaned. "Oh no. He _promised_ me he wouldn't."

Hatter let out something that sounded suspiciously like a giggle.

"This is not funny, Hatter!" Alice cried. "I made Jack promise not to let them put up any statues of us!"

Hatter threw back his head and laughed.

"It's not funny!" Alice hissed.

"No, no, you're right, it's not funny that everyone now knows what you look like," Hatter agreed, sobering. Then his shoulders began to shake with suppressed laughter. "But imagine the look on Dodo's face when he found out they were building a statue of you- right outside his front door!"

He began giggling again, and after a moment, Alice joined him.

"Dodo?" Carol asked, right back to being confused.

"Dusty old bird," Charlie sniffed.

"He's a contact from my Resistance days," Hatter explained, wiping tears from his eyes. "We never got alone, even then, and some of his issues with me seemed to have been transferred to Alice."

"What are his issues with you?" Carol asked.

The last traces of mirth left Hatter's face, and for a while they sat there in silence.

"It's complicated," Hatter said finally. "The basic part of it was that he fought the Queen by sacrificing everything and living underground in an illegal library, whereas I fought her by paying a little lip service and then using her resources to feed him and his, living a fairly comfortable lifestyle all the while."

Carol sat back, digesting.

"I did what I had to," Hatter said after a while.

"I still think he mostly doesn't like me because the Queen's reign ended within a week of my arrival and he didn't even get to help," Alice said.

"He was a bit of a hindrance, as I recall" Hatter added. "Something which certainly stuck in his craw later."

There was a shrieking noise, and the humming of the scarab stopped.

"We're here," Hatter said.

"I'm going to go find Darrel," Alice told them, standing up. "I'll meet you at the ramp."

Hatter stood as well. "Are you going to rip him a new one about the statue?"

"It'll make good practice for when we meet up with Jack," Alice replied. The two of them left the compartment, bickering genially.

As Carol helped Charlie to his feet, she filed away the fact that not so long ago, Wonderland had been a very dangerous place, and was likely not much better today, yet Alice couldn't seem to keep away.

~*~

Myumsiki City was more like what Carol was used to: full of towering, boxy buildings made out of concrete and steel. It didn't take long for the sense of wrong-footedness to return, however: there were plants _everywhere_, not just growing in the margins or in pots, but carpeting the ground and blooming in the corners. What Carol had, at first glance, taken to be a street, was in fact a river, as attested to be the small boats puttering on it. As she watched, a bright pink, flying _something_ zoomed down the same passage, causing the boat's occupants to duck instinctively.

Carol looked around, and spotted Alice quickly at the foot of the ramp, mostly because she was standing right in front of Darrel and his hat. She made her way towards them, Charlie clanking slightly as he followed.

"A month?" Alice was saying, dismayed. "It's been up and standing for a month?"

"Yes," Darrel said, sounding slightly confused. "I have to admit, I don't really see much resemblance. It always looked more like what I imagined the original Alice to look like than you."

"Are you blind?" Hatter demanded. "It's a dead ringer."

"It's really not," Darrel insisted. "The hair's too curly, for one thing-"

A suited man all but crashed into Carol at that moment, effectively cutting off the rest of that conversation.

"Sorry! Sorry! These shoes are new," the man apologized.

"It's alright, no harm done," Carol said.

The man nodded gratefully, then turned to Darrel. "We have an express boat waiting, sir."

"Good," Darrel said. "I've sent a message ahead, the King should be prepared for our arrival."

"Excellent!" Charlie cried, as they began to move towards the exit. "I do enjoy being able to fulfill my quests in a timely manner."

Hatter and Alice exchanged amused smiles, and they stepped out into the harsh sunlight, careful of the low shrubs growing just outside the door.

"So what exactly do I need to know about the King?" Carol asked, stepping up to a larger sort of motorboat. It was painted fire-engine red, with enough seating for two dozen people. She could see the people who'd kidnapped them in the handcuffed in the back, sandwiched between two rows of Darrel's men.

"Besides the fact that he's Alice's two-timing ex?" Hatter said.

Alice rolled her eyes. "He's also doing a pretty good job of ruling a country, especially when you consider what he had to work with when things started."

Hatter nodded reluctantly, looking a bit like he'd swallowed a lemon. The four of them squeezed into the row behind the driver's seat.

"He also doesn't believe me when I tell him important things like 'They're using something other than the Looking Glass to come over'," he grumbled. "I sleep less than fifty feet away from that thing, I work right underneath it, I know when it's being used!"

"They didn't trash your apartment," Alice said, turning suddenly. "If they'd come through the Looking Glass that would have been the first place hit."

"Do you think you could convince Jack of that?"

"I'll try."

They settled into the boat in silence, before Charlie said "We guard the Looking Glass and the Stone of Wonderland with the strictest of vigilance on our end. They could not travel through it without our knowledge as well."

"And there's no chance that the guards are being bribed?" Hatter said.

Charlie stiffened, chin jutting out. "How dare you!" he cried. "The Knights of the White Kingdom are above such petty, dishonorable behavior, sworn to protect-"

"Okay, okay, forget I said anything!" Hatter said hastily. "Remember who you're-"

The boat started with a load roar and took off with an incredible speed. Carol squinted against the wind and clutched at the edge of her seat; in a far off corner of her mind, she marveled that Hatter's hat stayed on with no help from him. The buildings blurred as they speed by, becoming on long block of grey, and when they turned a corner she nearly flew into Charlie's breastplate.

The stop came abruptly, of course, nearly pushing them all into the seat in before them.

"Is there any way," Carol said, once she got her breath back, "To travel in Wonderland that isn't terrifying?"

"Horseback riding can be nice," Hatter remarked, helping her out of the death trap.

"These things have become a lot less terrifying now that the King ordered seatbelts installed," Darrel added.

Hatter and Alice looked back into the boat, astonished.

"We'll have to remember those for next time," Alice said finally.

"Yep," Hatter replied sheepishly, adjusting his bowler.

Carol sighed wearily, looking around. This looked like a more affluent part of town: the streets were a lighter shade of grey, and the plants looked well-tended too. Up ahead was a building adorned with several frescos depicting different suits of playing cards. As she stood, she was aware of the suited men escorting the gunmen in through the front door, though neither Alice, nor Hatter made any move in that direction themselves.

"That's the Palace," Alice told her.

"It used to be a hotel," Hatter added. "Back in the days where there were amore smaller towns in the area and the Red and White Kingdoms were sovereign states. The old owner overdosed a good decade ago, it was pretty much just rotting away before Jack took it over."

Carol nodded again. It was quickly becoming her default response for things she didn't quite understand.

"This way," Darrel said, gesturing to the side. They walked through an alley that was only slightly wider than your average city sidewalk and so heavily in shadow that she could only see anything because of the lamps set into the walls. Alice hurried a bit before pulling even with Darrel, and they began to talk in voices too low to be heard.

"Is there anything I should know before we go in?" Carol asked, keeping towards the middle of the alley.

"Such as?" Hatter asked back from just behind her.

She wasn't even sure where to start. "Such as how to play croquet with a flamingo?"

"No. No flamingo croquet is being played these days," Hatter replied. "Just exchange pleasantries the same way you would with your boss in your world, and then we'll answer the rest of your questions after we've finished figuring out what's happening. And chewed out Jack for the whole statue thing."

"You don't know?" Carol asked, meaning 'How much don't you know?'

Hatter made a negative sound. "It depends on what that list is, and how much it's worth to the Queen's supporters," Hatter replied. "And whether or not we can trap them on one side of the Looking Glass. And how far they've managed to get into the White Rabbit."

"The White Rabbit isn't a person," Carol guessed.

"Nope, organization," Hatter replied. "They used to- well, these days there's a fair bit less violence involved in their jobs. They're in charge of monitoring the flows of goods and people between our worlds."

"So you work for them?"

Hatter winced. "Don't remind me."

Alice turned around suddenly. "We're going to have to take the elevator up."

"What?" Carol cried, dismayed.

"It's eighty stories up," Alice said apologetically.

Carol sighed, but inwardly acknowledged that it would be a bit much to expect everyone to walk up eighty flights of steps.

"If it makes you feel better, the elevators are pretty big, and it'll just be the five of us," Alice assured her. Up ahead, Darrel had opened the door, and was waiting for them to enter.

_Well, at least there were manners in Wonderland_ she mused as she stepped inside the palace.


	5. Advice from a Caterpillar

The elevator _was_ actually a decent size, and mirrored so that it appeared larger, which did wonders for Carol's nerves. On the other hand, it _was_ a fairly long elevator ride, with music provided by Charlie's humming, as Alice and Hatter had a conversation with each other's reflections using mainly their eyebrows, leaving Carol to stare at Darrel's hat.

Yeah. Elevators deserved to be hated for more reasons than just the fact that they were enclosed spaces.

"It's part of the uniform," Darrel said suddenly.

"Huh?"

"The hat. It's part of the Club's uniform," Darrel elaborated.

"Oh."

Thankfully, the doors then slide open, revealing a wide open lobby, with an entire wall of windows set on the far side. Carol gaped out at the skyline, and, visible just beyond that, the lake they'd flown over, sparkling in the mid-afternoon sun. She was so busy staring that she didn't notice that she was being left behind until her daughter tapped her on the shoulder.

"Ready to meet Jack again?" Alice asked, gesturing towards the double doors at the other end of the floor.

"Might as well," Carol replied, turning away from the windows a bit reluctantly.

~*~

She'd been picturing a throne room from out of a medieval castle; instead there was something which looked a bit more like an upper-class lounge. If it weren't for the pair of occupied, overstuffed thrones at the head of a long table, she'd have thought they'd taken a wrong turn.

Well, them and Charlie.

"Your Highnesses," the old knight said. "I have traveled from the Autonomous Region of the White Kingdom in order to bring you a message. And that message is: hello!"

There was a beat of silence.

"I believe she may have had a premonition that my presence would be required alongside Lady Alice and her Harbinger," Charlie added.

"Yes, well," said the man who was clearly Jack- although, was his hair always that blond?- as he rose from his chair. "Thank you for delivering the message promptly, as always Charlie."

"My pleasure, sire."

Darrel coughed. "I've instructed my men to make up your usual rooms."

"Oh, thank you!" Charlie said brightly.

"You must be tired," Jack offered. "If you like, you could retire to your rooms."

"Oh, stuff and nonsense," Charlie cried. "I'm as fit as a violin! As a cello, even."

"And it's not like we won't tell him what's going on anyway," Alice intervened. Charlie's brow furrowed.

"Still no patience for politics, I see," Jack said, fondly, smiling in a slightly deprecating manner.

"I know. Can you believe it?" Alice replied, smiling slightly. They hugged; Hatter exchanged long-suffering looks with the seated woman who appeared to have just been beamed down from Captain Kirk's quarters.

"You remember my mother," Alice said.

"Yes. Carol, right?" Jack asked, holding out his hand.

"And you're Jack," Carol confirmed, shaking it.

"This is my fiancé, Duchess," Jack said. She rose from her chair and held out a hand as well.

"It's nice to meet you. Alice has mentioned you often," Duchess said.

Carol blinked. "She has?"

Alice nodded. "If we have time, I have to show you some of the nicer bits of Wonderland. You'll love the snapdragon- flies."

Carol smiled and took Duchess's hand. If her daughter was comfortable enough with this woman who was affianced to her ex-boyfriend, then she was probably a friend.

"And everyone here knows who I am, so," Hatter clapped his hands together. "To business then."

They all sat down at the table, and then Alice and Hatter took turns explaining what had happened. Jack was frowning deeply by the time they got to the part where they'd all gone through the Looking Glass, and Duchess was giving Darrel a deeply concerted look.

"So you didn't tell them?"

"No, he didn't," Hatter said. "What is it we need to know?"

Jack opened his mouth, and then frowned, his eyes flicking towards her.

"I know nothing about anything," Carol told him.

"Oh don't say that," Charlie said. "You know plenty- just about that dratted underground railroad system, instead of Wonderland."

Carol smiled. Jack look deeply concerned, and Alice gave him a no-nonsense look as Hatter shook his head. Carol frowned at them. So they met and became revolutionary heroes in Wonderland- what else could they have done that they didn't want her knowing about?

"You are familiar," Jack began haltingly. "With the memory-modification techniques my mother employed, of course?"

Alice stiffened. Hatter shifted ever-so-slightly towards her. "Yeah," he said roughly. "We've got the general picture of what that entails."

"Memory modification," Carol repeated, horrified. What the hell happened?

"Metaphorical beheading, or so the gallows humor went," Darrel said, shrugging slightly. "Although it was always a bit-"

"The details of how the memories were modified are of no concern to us now," Duchess interrupted him. "The point is, we've discovered that the technique was used more widely than we previously assumed.

Both Hatter and Alice were looking as horrified as Carol felt now.

"How widely?" Alice asked.

"As far as we can tell, it was never used on general members of the Wonderland populace, but rather on those who were considered useful or dangerous, or some combination of the two. Several were- and still are- installed as members of the Court. Others were sent through the Looking Glass, given ordinary lives and backgrounds as Oysters, and unconscious desires to collect information for the White Rabbit."

Hatter nodded slowly. "And that's what's on the list: all the people who were brainwashed and planet on the other side."

"It's even more complicated than that, I fear," Jack said.

"How?" Alice demanded.

"Most of the names of on the list," he nodded to Darrel, who withdrew a folded piece of paper from inside his robes, "Are of people who were once members of the Court, several very high ranking, who also turned out to be moles for the Resistance. There are also more than a few members of the Chess Courts- including two potential heirs to the Red King's throne."

Hatter let out a low whistle as he took the list. "No wonder they were so eager to get their hands on it. This is more explosive than gunpowder."

"Indeed," Jack commented. He winced then, exchanged sidelong glances with Duchess, and then turned back to where Hatter had opened the list and placed it between himself and Alice. "It has been pointed out to me that I owe you an apology. In addition to what, admittedly, could not be anything but strict monitoring on your end, my Suits have confirmed that no unauthorized personnel have used the Looking Glass. Whatever means of travel the men who tried to kidnap you used, it was not that, and the fault does not lie with you. I shouldn't have implied otherwise."

Hatter opened his mouth, closed it again, and then, with great effort, muttered. "No problem, apology accepted."

"Well, now that we've had our moment of awkward male bonding, what are we going to do?" Carol asked, startling a smile out of Alice.

"Before we do anything else, we've got to figure out where the other Looking Glass, or Rabbit Hole, or tornado or whatever it is that they're using is," Hatter said. "Without that, we're stuck fighting an enemy that can disappear from this world into Earth and accumulate a force there at will. There's no way to fight that without getting the Earth governments involved, and as we've already decided not to even bother going down that route."

Carol opened her mouth to ask why not, but Alice got her words out first. "How could we do that?"

"I have no idea, I just think that's where we should start," Hatter said.

"Until recently, the possibility of there being more than one Looking Glass had never occurred to me," Jack admitted.

"If we're assuming that the other criminals who've unexpectedly shown up on Earth, then we should have some intelligence reports that could narrow it down," Duchess suggested.

"I can get those easily enough," Darrel said. "I can also inquire with the technicians, about what conditions a Looking Glass needs to operate."

Charlie's head hit the table with a loud thump, and he jerked up, shouting "I'm awake! I'm awake!"

There was a beat of silence, then Jack said "On that note, I think we should adjourn. Please, get that information, Ten. There's going to be a meeting of the Court tomorrow morning, partially to discuss this and the implications therein: Alice, Hatter, you are welcome to attend but-"

"Dodo is going to be there, and as we're liable to get into a sniping match…" Hatter interrupted tiredly.

"We'll take the cliff notes version," Alice said, before turning to Darrel. "Does my mom have rooms ready?"

"She should, directly next to your usual one," Darrel replied. There was a general scraping as everyone pulled up and away from the table. Jack and Darrel hung back, quickly engaging in more discussion.

"Well, goodnight all," Hatter said, adjusting his cap slightly as he turned to leave. Alice followed suit, so Carol did as well.

"Goodnight. And welcome home," Duchess replied.

Carol though Hatter might had stiffened a bit at that, but by then the door to the hall was open, and there was too much sunlight in her eyes to be sure.

**A/N: I'm sorry updates have slowed: schoolwork is starting to pick up, as is the word count of the one-shots I'm turning out. I'm still alive and working, though!**


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